


A Lack of Antlers

by fmo



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Serious fluff, tentacles are mentioned but aren't involved in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 13:09:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fmo/pseuds/fmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos has face blindness: he can't recognize faces.</p><p>That means that he kind of likes living in Night Vale, because it's so much easier for him to recognize people with unique features like two heads or tentacles or a train of angels.</p><p>Carlos just wishes that Cecil had one of those really unusual traits, so that he could recognize him more easily.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lack of Antlers

Just a few days after moving into Night Vale, Carlos noticed that there was one way in which life here was much _easier_ than life in, well, the non-Night Vale world.

 

A lot of people here had really distinctive traits. Old Woman Josie was typically shadowed by a crowd of angels.  Some people had two heads, or scales, or tentacles, or naturally luminous hair.  The cashier at Big Rico's was actually a centaur. And this was such a wonderful relief, in a way, because Carlos had prosopagnosia: face blindness. He just didn’t have the ability to recognize other people’s faces as most people did. But if Carlos met someone who was the only person in town with two heads--well, that helped him a  _lot_  in recognizing them later.

 

Like most people with face blindness, Carlos had accumulated tricks and strategies to help him recognize the people around him. He’d memorize face shapes or distinguishing moles or the specific shapes of people’s hands or bodies. But despite all of these strategies, embarrassments happened. If someone he’d known for years cut and dyed their hair, or got contact lenses, Carlos might look right past them if he’d been relying on specific details about their hairstyle or glasses to help him identify them.

 

In Night Vale, though, he knew he could recognize his landlady because nobody else in town had large, fuzzy antlers. He could say, “Hi, Louisa,” with confidence, and _he’d be right._

 

Of course it was just his bad luck, Carlos thought, that the one person he’d really like to be able to recognize had none of those particularly Night Valian features that would help Carlos to know who he was for sure. Carlos knew Cecil’s voice well, knew his personality and his name, but he couldn’t recognize him by sight; Cecil didn’t have anything like antlers or a second head or any of those unique traits that would help Carlos to know that the person he'd seen was definitely, without question, Cecil. 

 

In fact, as far as Carlos could tell, Cecil looked unusually _un_ remarkable; Cecil wasn’t particularly tall or short, wasn’t particularly thin or fat. The only slightly remarkable thing that Carlos noticed about Cecil was the way that he brushed his hair forward in heavy bangs over his forehead, so that the edge of his bangs just touched his eyebrows. But Carlos couldn’t just rely on that—Cecil could easily decide to wear his hair differently, or get a haircut. And then embarrassment could happen.

 

And as time went on, Carlos began to realize how devastated Cecil would be if Carlos passed him by on the street and ignored him. Or, worse, if Cecil found out that Carlos had called a total stranger by Cecil’s name.

 

So Carlos stuck to calling and text messaging. If he needed to see Cecil, Carlos would ask Cecil to meet him somewhere like the diner. Then Carlos would make sure to get there early and wait, pretending to be absorbed in a document he’d brought with him, until Cecil arrived and spotted him.

 

Once Cecil was sitting across from him, of course, Carlos could easily tell that he was Cecil just by his voice and behavior. Nobody in town said “Uh-huh?” quite like Cecil. The endearingness of it even sort of outweighed the inevitable awkwardness of Cecil recounting the entire meeting over the radio.

 

Okay, Carlos knew that all he had to do was _explain_ it to Cecil. He hoped that Cecil would understand, although sometimes Cecil’s reactions to things were absolutely not what he expected. Carlos knew that all he had to do was _tell_ Cecil, but. He was busy. Carlos had a lot to do, what with saving the town every week or so.

 

This was what Carlos told himself.

 

In the meantime, everyone else in town busied themselves with making arch remarks and, in the case of the Sheriff’s Secret Police, leaving messages in his (wheat-free) breakfast cereal assuring him that Cecil really, for sure, really liked him. Once, an old lady with spider-like prehensile limbs approached Carlos in the grocery store and told him that she’d been Cecil’s teacher in high school. Apparently Cecil had won first prize in the tenth grade science fair.

 

Finally, when Carlos had asked Cecil to come find him in the parking lot of the Arby’s, and had seen that figure approaching him—which he knew was Cecil because of its frantic gait and the trophy clutched in his hand—he told himself that he had to tell Cecil. Because then Cecil’s head was on his shoulder, and Carlos really really wanted to sit like this again with Cecil.

 

“Cecil?” Carlos said, after a long, lovely stretch of contemplating the glow of the Arby’s sign.

 

“Uh-huh?” said Cecil, warm against Carlos’s shoulder.

 

“I was just wondering.”

 

Cecil’s head moved slightly. “Wondering?”

 

“Well.” Carlos’s hand suddenly felt awkward against Cecil’s knee, so he put it around Cecil’s waist instead. Then that seemed awkward too, but Carlos forced himself to press on. “I was just wondering. Because it seems like a lot of people in Night Vale have, um, unusual physical traits. Like gills, or tentacles, etcetera. So I was wondering—“

 

Carlos was about to say _I was wondering why that is_ , with the goal of somehow creating a segue into his ultimate point, but then Cecil removed his head from Carlos’s shoulder and looked at Carlos worriedly.

 

The amazing thing about Cecil, Carlos thought, was how open he was. Even amidst all the secrets here in Night Vale, Cecil was utterly transparent about his own feelings.

 

“Because if you did have anything like that, I would be interested. Scientifically,” Carlos said, quickly adjusting his plan for the conversation. “And um. Personally.”

 

“Well,” Cecil said. Carlos could almost see the thought process in Cecil’s mind: _It’s for Carlos. Carlos asked me._ And then, suddenly, Cecil swept the hair away from his forehead to reveal—an eye. A large eye, blinking anxiously in concert with his other two eyes.

 

A very, very unusual and noticeable eye. Nobody else in Night Vale had one, as far as Carlos had seen.

 

“Cecil,” Carlos said with feeling, “it’s perfect.”

 

With an expression of exceptional joy, the Voice of Night Vale clasped Carlos’s hand in his own, rather tightly. It looked as though Cecil was lost for words again. But that was okay.

 

[Later on, Cecil decided to help his perfect Carlos as much as he could by also wearing distinctive clothing items, like furry pants. Carlos took this as it was intended: as a gesture of love.]

**Author's Note:**

> I have a bit of face blindness myself, so I've used all of those little tricks for recognizing people. I notice people's face shapes, eyebrow shapes, all kinds of little details about the way they stand and walk. But I just see their faces as a collection of those details, not as a coherent whole.
> 
> This means I definitely appreciate my friends who have really unique traits, like blue hair or a distinctive piercing or tattoo. Makes my life easier. : )
> 
> From Wikipedia's article on prosopagnosia: 
> 
> "Prosopagnosics often learn to use 'piecemeal' or 'feature by feature' recognition strategies. This may involve secondary clues such as clothing, gait, hair color, body shape, and voice. Because the face seems to function as an important identifying feature in memory, it can also be difficult for people with this condition to keep track of information about people, and socialize normally with others."


End file.
